Bugsy Siegel

• Born: February 28, 1906
• Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
• Died: June 20, 1947
• Place of death: Beverly Hills, California

Criminal

Siegel started as a petty thief in New York City and rose high in the ranks of mobsters. With mob money, he began building the Flamingo Hotel in a desert city called Las Vegas. While that venture failed, Las Vegas evolved into a gambling mecca.

Early Life

Benjamin Siegel was born in 1906 to poor Jewish immigrants from Russia (now Ukraine) in one of the boroughs of New York City. Williamsburg, the neighborhood in Brooklyn in which Siegel grew up, was a melting pot of European immigrants and of second- and third-generation Americans. The area’s inhabitants were Jews, Russians, Poles, Germans, and Italians. Siegel spent most of his early years deploring his family’s hard lifestyle and the demanding work his father did for little pay. He was eager to break free from the traditional harsh labor his ancestors had faced in the New World.

In childhood, he helped form a street gang that committed minor thefts and provided protection services to area merchants. The clever part was that merchants paid protection fees to keep Siegel and his crew from stealing their wares. This early taste of power and an ample supply of money by force helped propel Siegel into his gangster career. As a teenager, nicknamed Bugsy because of his temper, he advanced in his criminal activities and was introduced to Meyer Lansky, a well-known thug in the area. With Meyer on board, the gang became involved with gambling and car theft. Soon Siegel was designated a hit man.

Life’s Work

In his twenties, Siegel ran one of the best-known bootlegging, gambling, and auto-theft rings in New York City. His reputation stretched from New York into neighboring New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, and his activities began to attract the attention of well-known mobsters such as Frank Costello, Joe Masseria, Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, and Lucky Luciano. With this new-found attention, Siegel and his pals from the Meyer mob became an integral part of a new powerhouse run by Luciano and Masseria. In the meantime, Siegel married his boyhood sweetheart and mother of his children, Esta Krakow.

On April, 15, 1931, under orders from Luciano, Siegel and three gunmen (Genovese, Anastasia, and Joe Adonis) murdered Masseria, ending the power struggle for head of the New York mob. Siegel’s fearless and cold handling of the assassination elevated him to being one of Luciano’s primary hit men. In order to officially end the feud for power, known as the Castellammarese War, Luciano had Siegel’s men murder Masseria’s enemy, Salvatore Maranzano. With both powerful men out of the way, New York City was Luciano’s to take. With Luciano in power, Siegel continued to carry out murder contracts, and after a few minor arrests for petty crimes and the assassinations of rival mobsters and loan sharks, Siegel had made a name for himself. However, with this fame came attention from rival mobsters who, in turn, put out several contracts on Siegel’s life.

Siegel chose to leave the area for a new project on the West Coast of the United States involving the Italian mob. Although it appears Siegel was not happy about moving west, the danger of staying in New York outweighed his worries. With at least a dozen contracts out on his life, Siegel moved with this family to California in 1937.

Siegel and few of his friends who migrated to Hollywood hoped to create a powerful organization to work in association with the Luciano crime family on the East Coast. The pals were Mickey Cohen and Jack Dragna and Siegel’s many mistresses, who were helpful sources in their contacts with the wealthy actors in Hollywood. When Siegel was not up to his traditional criminal mischief, which included illegal gambling rackets and shakedowns of local establishments, he was often involved with blackmailing some of the Hollywood elite. Using mistresses, including Ketti Gallian, Virginia Hill, Marie MacDonald, Wendy Barrie, and Dorothy DiFrasso, Siegel gained inside information on wealthy and influential people. This put him in a choice position to extort from actors, directors, and even studios’ money, the rights to movies, the selection of actors, and the royalties involved in the production and protection of films. His gangster lifestyle earned him a sordid reputation in California, and his womanizing earned him a divorce from his wife. In 1939, Siegel was put on trial for murder of a police informant named Harry Greenberg. Siegel was acquitted in the case, but the negative publicity quashed his ability to be involved in any legitimate business enterprises.

However, he found a new start in 1946. Siegel was ordered by his associates to oversee the building of a gambling structure in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gambling had become legal in the defunct railroad town of Las Vegas during the 1930’s. Siegel apparently envisioned Las Vegas as a big money-maker, with the legalization of gambling and the almost endless supply of real estate, but he lacked the financial backing to tackle the project himself.

Unwilling to see the desert venue as his permanent home, Siegel wanted construction of the Flamingo Hotel to go quickly. He used connections to obtain black-market construction materials in order to cut costs. Although savvy in the ways of criminals, Siegel floundered in the role of architect and of construction foreman. Building materials were stolen from his construction site, and later they were sold back to him. In addition, he insisted that his suite in the hotel have elaborate escape routes, and he wanted all rooms to have elegant chandeliers, their own sewer systems and bathroom plumbing, and luxurious appointments to attract high rollers from California. The project was budgeted at approximately one million dollars; by the end of the first year, more than five million dollars of Luciano’s money had been spent. In addition, stockholders and private investors sank more than a million dollars in a hotel that was nowhere near finished.

Siegel opened the Flamingo to the public before the hotel was completed, and guests were disappointed in its appearance and its condition and the absence of the perks that had been promised. The Flamingo was a bust, with the unexplainable loss of a large amount of money. Siegel was a complete failure in the eyes of friends and a thief in the eyes of his mobster colleagues, and a contract was placed on him. On June 20, 1947, at the Beverly Hills home of his mistress Hill, who some believe knew of the hit, Siegel was gunned down. Only five people attended Siegel’s funeral. None of his pals from the old Meyer mob and the streets of New York City was present.

Significance

There is such Hollywood lore surrounding Siegel and his criminal activities that he made a suitable topic for a movie, starring Warren Beatty, Bugsy (1991). Siegel’s vision of a gambling oasis in the desert of Nevada was never realized during his lifetime. Nevertheless, what Siegel began with the building of the Flamingo Hotel evolved into an international travel destination, where luxury, alcohol, and gambling abound. Las Vegas was born in a network of mob connections, but it thrives today as a popular playground for adults.

Bibliography

Carpozi, George, Jr. Bugsy: The Bloodthirsty, Lusty Life of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. New York: Shapolsky, 1992. A comprehensive biography that covers the mobster lifestyle of Siegel.

Edmonds, Andy. Bugsy’s Baby: The Secret Life of Mob Queen Virginia Hill. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol, 1993. A profile of Hill, Siegel’s mistress and later his girlfriend after his divorce, and what role she played in his death.

Fischer, Steve. When the Mob Ran Vegas: Stories of Money, Mayhem, and Murder. Omaha, Nebr.: Berkline Press, 2007. Details the inner workings of the mob and the beginnings of Las Vegas with the work of Siegel.

Otfinoski, Steven. Bugsy Siegel and the Postwar Boom. Woodbridge, Conn.: Blackbirch Press, 2000. Details the mobster’s role in the building of Las Vegas, with an in-depth look at how Siegel’s outsize ego led him into trouble.